Georgia Milestones, SY 2024-25
All grades, all students. % Proficient or Distinguished.English Language Arts
48.7%
State avg 40.1%
District avg 47.1%
County avg 47.1%
+2.6pp since 2021-22
Mathematics
46.2%
State avg 44.6%
District avg 50.8%
County avg 50.8%
-0.3pp since 2021-22
Science
40.0%
State avg 40.6%
District avg 47.2%
County avg 47.2%
-3.9pp since 2021-22
Social Studies
N/A
State avg 39.3%
District avg 48.0%
County avg 48.0%
What this means: On the Georgia Milestones, Georgia's statewide test, about 49 of every 100 students at this school read and write at grade level, about 46 of 100 do math at grade level, and about 40 of 100 are at grade level in science. Across all Georgia schools, those numbers are about 40, 45, and 41. Reading and writing scores are up about 3 points since 2021, while math scores have held steady and science scores are down about 4 points.
Rank: Shirley Hills Elementary School places #406 of 1,208 Georgia elementary schools, and #11 of 19 in Houston County for state test proficiency.
BeatsExpectations
Demographically-adjusted score · methodologyTier
OUTPERFORMING
Top 10% of GA schools after controlling for student poverty
Actual proficiency
46.6%
composite math + reading, all grades
Predicted
25.7%
based on GA schools with similar FRL share
Beats by
+20.9pp
above demographic expectation
What this means: About 47% of students here test proficient in math and reading, well above the roughly 26% typical for Georgia schools with a similar share of low-income students. BeatsExpectations ranks schools against others at the same poverty level, not by raw scores, so a school can post high scores and still fall short of its prediction, or post lower scores and still beat it. This school clears its prediction by about 21 points, placing it in Georgia's top 10%.
BeatsExpectations runs a per-state regression of proficiency on free/reduced-lunch share, then scores each school by residual.
How this is calculated →What is Georgia Milestones?
Georgia public-school students in grades 3 through 8 take the Georgia Milestones End-of-Grade (EOG) tests in English Language Arts, Math, Science (grades 5/8), and Social Studies (grade 8). High school students take End-of-Course (EOC) Milestones in American Literature, Algebra, Biology, and US History.
What does "% Proficient or Distinguished" mean?
It is the percentage of students at the school who scored at "Proficient Learner" or "Distinguished Learner" on Georgia Milestones (top 2 of 4 performance levels: Beginning, Developing, Proficient, Distinguished). Proficient and above means the student is performing at or beyond grade level. A higher number is better.
What does 48.7% mean for English Language Arts at Shirley Hills Elementary School?
It means about 48.7 percent of students tested at Shirley Hills Elementary School performed at grade level or above on the Georgia Milestones English Language Arts test in 2024-25. The statewide average for Georgia that year was 40.1%. The other students fell into the lower performance levels.
How is the state average calculated?
It is a weighted average, not a simple average of each school's number. We multiply each public school's score by how many of its students tested, add those together for all schools in Georgia, and divide by the total students tested that year. This way a big school with 1,500 students counts more than a small school with 50 students, which is the right way to ask "how did the typical student do this year?". District and county averages on this page use the same method, just scoped to that district or county.
Where does this data come from?
Georgia Department of Education + Governor's Office of Student Achievement (GOSA), Georgia Milestones Assessment System (GMAS) End-of-Grade (grades 3-8) and End-of-Course (high school) assessments. School-level results from the GOSA Downloadable Data Repository. Headline metric is the cumulative "Proficient or Distinguished Learner" rate (top 2 of 4 Milestones performance levels).
How often is it updated?
Georgia Milestones is administered once a year (spring). Results are released by the state in the summer or early fall. We refresh this page after each annual release.
